Alterman on the Accelerated Dragon

8/15/2004 – Many players are attracted to the Dragon Sicilian, but are put off by the fierce mating attacks that White can launch. So why not try the Accelerated Dragon, where Black has a few nasty surprises in store for White. In Sunday's Playchess lecture GM Boris Alterman tells us all about them.

Fischer renounces US citizenship

8/15/2004 – Bobby Fischer has been moved to a new detention facility in Tokyo, pending a decision on his deportation to the US, where he faces a 10-year jail sentence. A lot of new material has surfaced, including Fischer's handwritten renouncement of his US citizenship and a blow-by-blow description and picture of his arrest at Narita Airport. Harrowing stuff...

The greatest chess game ever played...

8/15/2004 – Anderssen-Kieseritzky? Byrne-Fischer? Botvinnik-Capablanca? No, none of these. According to our Playchess.com trainer Dennis Monokroussos the award goes to Estrin-Berliner from the 5th Correspondence World Chess Championship. Well, maybe. Judge for yourself in Dennis' Monday night lecture

Printing out the news

8/14/2004 – We often receive letters from visitors who want to print out our news articles, more often in summer, when people like to read things in the garden. Unfortunately the printout functions of most browsers tend to cut off some of the text. Good news: we have fixed the problem with a new print facility.

Goh Weiming: Ready for war over the board

8/14/2004 – Some people think that chess players in the Internet are just statistics, nicknames, fluctuating rating, chatters. Well, we have news for you! They do have their lives and their formidable experiences. Here's the story of "KGWM", a Playchess.com member who plays for Singapore and trains in the jungles of Brunei.

Computer titans clash in Abu Dhabi

8/14/2004 – This could be the highest level of computer chess ever played – and you can watch it unfold live on Playchess.com. An eight-game match between multiple world champion Shredder, running on a superfast four-processor system, and Hydra, a Deep Blue style hardware program running on a 16-way Linux cluster. Here are all the details...

The science of chess

8/13/2004 – Science – good science – does not try to corroborate theories. It attempts to destroy them, to falsify the prime theses, as Karl Raimund Popper so eloquently described. Now it turns out that strong chess players behave like good scientists – a conclusion reached by cognitive scientists Michelle Cowley and Ruth Byrne. It is all in Nature magazine.

Light clothing, beautiful legs

8/12/2004 – In the height of summer there are exciting chess events being staged all over the world. We bring you reports and links from the British Championship in Scarborough, the Hogeschool event in Holland, the Tournoi d'échecs in Montréal and the Russia-China match in Moscow. We also have a lot of exciting pictures.

Short on blunders – part two already

8/11/2004 – Some time ago we spoke to Nigel Short about the FIDE world championship in Tripoli, which he disparagingly called a "blunderfest". Well, guess who committed the biggest flub-up of them all? We probe the mechanisms of Nigel's incredible blunder in Libya, all the way to the bone, in part two of our interview.

Spassky to Bush: Arrest me!

8/10/2004 – Boris Spassky, who played the contentious return match against Bobby Fischer in Yugoslavia 1992, for which the latter is currently facing deportation and incarceration in the US, has appealed to President Bush to show mercy and charity for his tormented successor. If for some reason that should be impossible, Spassky suggests a very imaginative alternative...

Anand wins Mainz rapid over Shirov

8/8/2004 – India's Viswanathan Anand continued his hot German summer and added to his wardrobe for the fourth consecutive year in Mainz. He was awarded the winner's black jacket by organizer Hans Walter-Schmitt for his 5-3 Rapid Duel victory over Spaniard Alexei Shirov. Alexander Grischuk and Peter Svidler also defended their 2003 Mainz titles. Photos and report.

Ilyumzhinov and the Chess City in Dubai

8/8/2004 – Who can say he doesn't think big? FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has just unveiled a plan to build a new "chess city" in the Emirate of Dubai. It's a US $2.6 billion project that is expected to play host to (hold on to your hats) 60 million amateur and professional chess followers annually. You don't believe he can do it?

Alterman on the Dragon

8/8/2004 – The Dragon Variation of the Open Sicilian is one of the most-feared openings in chess, with generations of players and experts creating a monumental body of theory. The double-edged play makes it an opening nobody can ignore. In Sunday's Playchess lecture GM Boris Alterman tells us why.

Free points from Pal Benko

8/8/2004 – He twice made it to the Candidates' Tournament – Hungarian-born Pal Benko, today a respected chess columnist, is someone from whom you can learn a trick or two. In his Monday night Playchess.com lecture Dennis Monokroussos illustrates the point with a remarkable 45-year-old game.

Chess Classic 2004: Anand leads Shirov 4:2

8/8/2004 – With one day and two games to go India's Vishy Anand leads Alexei Shirov by two points in their Rapid Chess match. In the Chess960 (Fischer Random) between Peter Svidler and Levon Aronian all six games were decided for a 3:3 score. The FiNet Chess960 Open was won by Zoltan Almasi. Details in our illustrated report.

Almira wins Ural Supertournament

8/8/2004 – One of the strongest women's tournaments of all time ended with a resounding victory by Moldavian-French WGM Almira Skripchenko. After returning to Paris Almira spoke to us on the phone, telling us about the tournament and her colleagues. She even annotated her best game for us. Here is an extensive illustrated report.

Mate search in Fritz

8/7/2004 – Fritz' Mate engine is a useful tool for solving the "mate in x" problems that we find in chess books and magazines. Today we take a closer look at the Mate engine and answer a nagging question that some users occasionally ask: "Why does Mate analyze so slowly?" ChessBase Workshop...

IM Bryon Nickoloff (1956 – 2004)

8/7/2004 – In 1999 doctors told Bryon Nickoloff that he had cancer and less than six months to live. But the well-known Canadian IM survived for five years, playing strong chess tournaments to the very end. His last game was at the Canadian Open in July, where he defeated his opponent with the black pieces. Bryon passed away on August 3rd. Frank Dixon remembers one of Canada's best.

Chess Classic 2004: Carmen in Mainz

8/6/2004 – She is one of the top ten earning super-models in the world, and a "kick-ass" chess player. And the President of the Estonian Chess Federation. Carmen Kass is the star guest at the Chess Classic, where she took on the chess champs in blitz games. (Oh, yes, Anand scored in his Rapid Chess match against Shirov). Here's the Carmen Kass story...

Dortmund 2004: A pictorial farewell

8/6/2004 – The Dortmund Super-GM is over, most of the players have migrated to Mainz to play in the Chess Classic., and there still remains a lot to show and tell. Like many unpublished pictures, or the press conference held by ACP president Joel Lautier, outlining the plan of the professional chess organisation. Here's our final Dortmund report.

Chess Classic 2004: A change of pace

8/5/2004 – Unlike Dortmund, the Mainz Chess Classic, which begins today, propagates faster and unusual forms of chess. There are Rapid and Fischer Random matches between world-class GMs, and Opens for Rapid and Random games. And lots more, as you can find out in our Chess Classic Guide...

Fritz middlegame trainer: attacking chess

8/3/2004 – Nearly everyone loves attacking chess, but few of us are good at it. Mainly because we don't know how to establish the prerequisites for an attack. IM Jacob Aagaard shows us how to create winning attacks in his new CD series Fritz Middlegame Trainer: Attacking Chess. Tear off the shrink-wrap and take a sneak peek at this two CD set in this week's ChessBase Workshop.

Maria Manakova in Speed

8/2/2004 – She is a full-fledged women's chess grandmaster, who recently scored 5/7 for her club at the European Club Cup in Crete. Maria has also become something of a sex symbol in the chess world. In a recent interview she spoke frankly about sex and chess, and also posed for the cover of a Russian rag magazine. We bring you the interview and pictures...

Morozevich clinches Biel with a 2863 performance

8/2/2004 – Alexander Morozevich won the Biel Chess Festival with some dazzling chess and a 2863 performance. India's Sasikiran also played with imagination and enterprise. We bring you games and results from the men's and women's groups in this pictorial report by Thomas Pähtz.